‘They can breathe freely now’: The International Council of Women and Ottoman Muslim Women

Abstract

This article explores the interactions between Ottoman (Muslim) women and the extending international women’s movement of the “first wave.” While historians of the three large international women’s organizations—the International Council of Women, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—date the first contacts between the international women’s movement and women in the Middle East in the 1920s, this article shows that they actually started well before the turn of the century.